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Sean Hannity
Sean Hannity urged Arizona Republicans to repeal the near-total abortion ban a court imposed on the swing state in order to contain the political damage to Donald Trump and the GOP. Hours later, after they refused to do so, he deceived his Fox News viewers by blaming Democrats.
Republicans are reeling after the Arizona Supreme Court jolted the national and state political environment on Tuesday by restoring an 1864 state law banning abortion in nearly all cases. Trump, who took credit for overturning Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for abortion and said on Monday before the ruling that states “will” determine abortion law, subsequently claimed on Wednesday that the court had gone too far. Kari Lake, the leading GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Arizona, and other Republicans in tough races are walking back their past positions to condemn the ruling.
Hannity waited until after Trump spoke out to take a position on the ruling, finally responding on Wednesday night with the ludicrous suggestion that Arizona Democrats were deliberately sabotaging efforts to repeal the law for partisan gain.
“Trump opposes the law and this ruling,” he said. “And you know what? Arizona’s governor is a Democrat. The state’s attorney general is a Democrat. The state legislature is almost evenly divided. If Democrats — you want to get rid of the law, well, you have a chance right now to get rid of it. And I would advise you, get rid of it!”
The Fox host concluded, “They would rather use it as a political tool ahead of November.”
Hannity’s statement that “the state legislature is almost evenly divided” is almost comically deceptive. Republicans have majorities in both the state House and the state Senate, and earlier that day, Arizona’s GOP lawmakers blocked Democratic efforts to roll back the law in each chamber. Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma, a Republican currently facing a competitive primary, told Axios “that he wouldn't support a repeal and wouldn't permit a vote on it.”
Hannity knows that Republicans control the fate of the state’s 1864 abortion ban. Speaking on his radio show Wednesday afternoon, he urged Arizona’s Republican officials to “change the law now.”
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): There's a lot to get into. Although, honestly, it's — it's more simple than people think. And I know the media, the mob, and everybody in between is just freaking out over this Arizona Supreme Court decision, which literally goes back to a 160-year-old near-total abortion ban without exceptions for rape, incest, mother's life, any of that. It was even before Arizona was a state. And there's no Republican that supports this, but that's what — Whoopi Goldberg says Republicans want to bring slavery back following the decision. I'm like, OK. Here we go. The demagoging never ends. The lying, the distortion, the misinformation, the propaganda. This is what needs to happen. This is my message for all of you elected state Republican leaders out there in Arizona. Get your act together. Change the law now, and that means every Republican has to stay united, and you better understand where the people in this country are on the issue of abortion. Putting aside over 50% of abortions are now done with the pill, put that aside. And what you need to do is follow the Dobbs decision, 15 weeks, follow the first-trimester decision, whatever it is. And then you've got to force your Democratic governor, Hobbs, to sign a bill that says no late-term abortions, no abortions based on gender or race. I talked to Arizona — former Arizona AG Brnovich. He had some great ideas. You know, find a point of where a viability restriction would be palpable to the overwhelming number of people in your state, and stand up and do your job and get it done now.
“This is my message for all of you elected state Republican leaders out there in Arizona,” Hannity said. “Get your act together. Change the law now, and that means every Republican has to stay united, and you better understand where the people in this country are on the issue of abortion.”
But it turns out that when your political movement treats abortion as murder and calls for banning it “from the moment of conception,” some people who actually believe that — rather than pretending to so Republicans can win elections and cut taxes for rich people — won’t play along.
Arizona’s abortion ban is entirely the fault of Republicans. All six U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe and open the door to such policies were appointed under a Republican president, including three Trump nominees confirmed by a Republican-controlled Senate. GOP governors appointed every member of the Arizona Supreme Court, which was expanded by Republicans in 2016.
But the political consequences of their actions are devastating for the GOP, so the party’s candidates are running away from them while propagandists like Hannity try to deceive the public about who is to blame.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
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Instead Of Fixing Harsh Abortion Law, Arizona Republicans Flee State House
@DevilsTower
April 12 | 2024
Ben Toma
On Wednesday, Donald Trump said the Arizona Supreme Court ruling that restored an 1864 ban on all abortions “went too far.” Even Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake, an anti-abortion zealot, begged Gov. Katie Hobbs for help and asked the state legislature to pass “an immediate common sense solution.”
But that same evening, when Republicans in the Arizona Legislature had a chance to address the 1864 law, they used another option—they ran for the exits. GOP lawmakers ignored votes to suspend the archaic law and instead voted to take a recess. Twice.
Republicans aren’t taking immediate action. They’re not even taking less-than-immediate action. Their reaction to efforts to repeal the 1864 ban was to get out of town for the next week.
As AZ Mirror reports, Republican state Rep. Matt Gress made a motion to suspend the House rules and allow an immediate vote on a bill to repeal the 1864 law that was slipped in between a ban on prizefighting and just ahead of a regulation setting the age of consent at 10. But instead of taking the immediate action that Trump, Lake, and so many others in the party called for in public, the Republican-controlled legislature had an alternative proposal: a call for a short recess.
When Republicans returned from their break, Democrats in the House again tried to get a vote scheduled, with state Rep. Stephanie Stahl Hamilton arguing that leaving the archaic law on the books meant that “people will die.” Instead, Republicans once again voted to take a break—this time shutting down the Arizona House until April 17.
The fact that calls for blocking the law didn’t get the kind of action some national figures claimed they wanted should not be a surprise. Both Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Peterson are supporters of the 1864 law. Toma and Peterson provided an amicus brief in favor of restoring the Civil War-era legislation.
That brief called for the state Supreme Court to vacate a decision blocking the implementation of the law, saying, “the Court should vacate the Court of Appeals’ opinion, and give effect to all of Arizona’s laws restricting abortion”—including the 1864 ban.
Toma and Peterson claimed their reason for submitting the brief was “to articulate the perspective of the legislative branch.” So it’s no surprise that instead of moving to repeal the 1864 law, Republicans in Arizona’s Legislature chose to duck and run.
That schism between national Republican figures’ public proclamations and Republican legislators’ actions on the front line perfectly captures the overall GOP position on abortion: They don’t have a clue about how to pull themselves out of the hole they’ve spent 50 years digging.
Increasingly harsh anti-abortion rhetoric has been at the core of the Republican Party for decades. Abortion has been the issue the GOP has leaned on for turnout in many states, and anti-abortion activists have been used as ground troops for Republican efforts.
Those activists believe that life begins at conception—a concept now at the heart of a lot of Republican abortion legislation. For those who share this belief, the Arizona ruling, and even the Alabama ruling against in-vitro fertilization, are considered “wins.”
However, while those activists may be a big deal in the Republican base, they are a small and shrinking minority of the general public. Support for abortion rights has continued to grow since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. As the 2024 election looms, the abortion issue could result in Democratic gains in state after state, especially those with statewide referendums or constitutional amendments protecting the right to an abortion on the ballot.
Arizona and Florida are likely to be two of those states. Losing either of those states would be a disaster for Republicans, and every time a story like the ruling that restored the 1864 law makes the news the odds of a blue tide driven by a demand for securing abortion rights becomes greater. Republicans must fix this, and fix it fast, before it becomes the dominant issue in November. They know that. This is why Donald Trump is making statements that seem to contradict themselves by the day.
Republicans have reached a point where they’re willing to offend those anti-abortion activists if it will just make this issue go away.
They really do need to fix this. Only … they don’t know how.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.
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